[braz]

That photo is located here:

\xbmc\addons\skin.refocus\media\thumbs\default_Actor.png

If you're using the skin from the XBMC repository, there's no easy way to change it as the textures are compressed.

If you're using the skin from github, you can just replace the .png file with one of your choosing.

Shouldn't XBMC use any provided uncompressed texture with the same path even if there's one in the .xbt? I believe this used to be the case at least, although that might have been when XBMC was still using .xpr files.

My experience has been that XBMC will load the compressed textures and ignore any uncompressed textures with the same path/filename as those in the .xbt. Adding new uncompressed textures that don't exist in the .xbt works ok.

[Jeroen]

Is it possible to disable Fanart Grabber? I don't use it as I have my own folder of fanart, so it's loading everytime during startup without use for me. Not that it's a big deal, but maybe the home menu would appear a bit earlier.

You should be able to disable any add-on through the add-on browser. But since reFocus performs a check related to the add-on I'm not sure how that's going to behave ATM. I don't think I'll be providing options for it as the time saved would be negligible IMO.

My experience has been that XBMC will load the compressed textures and ignore any uncompressed textures with the same path/filename as those in the .xbt. Adding new uncompressed textures that don't exist in the .xbt works ok.

Ah, I'm probably confusing it with that

[robweber]

The fanart slideshow is using the Fanart Grabber add-on, and it's loaded during startup. In Startup.xml there's this line:

PHP Code:

<onload condition="System.HasAddon(script.grab.fanart)">RunScript(script.grab.fanart,mode=random,refresh=20)</onload> 


Editing the value for refresh should control this. However when trying this out myself this would not work. As described here it should also be possible to adjust it in the addon's settings (settings->add-ons->enabled add-ons->services->Grab Fanart), but I just got a blank settings window.

@robweber: if you're reading along, could you shed a light on this?

I am reading along! Adjusting the refresh=x value in the Startup.xml file should change the refresh rate. I tried this using reFocus from git on my home system and it worked. I changed to 10, 5,and 2 - plus enabled some debug logging to ensure it changed. Everything worked for me.

Regarding the addon settings, I've just removed this from the README. The Fanart Grabber addon used to be a script and now it is a module. Module's aren't normally seen in the addon browser so they have no visible settings to change. If you look in the settings.xml file the settings are still there. I also didn't want any confusion between what the user wanted and what the skin author decided to do. Figured restricting this to within the skin was better.

If this isn't working for you I'd be curious as to why. Any details you can give me of the tests you've done would be great. Also, if you add

PHP Code:

utils.log(utils.getSetting('refresh'),xbmc.LOGDEBUG) 


To line 141 of the service.py file you can print the refresh time in debug mode and check. Side note - the default refresh time is 10 so this setting must be working since reFocus extends this to 20 seconds normally.

You should be able to disable any add-on through the add-on browser. But since reFocus performs a check related to the add-on I'm not sure how that's going to behave ATM. I don't think I'll be providing options for it as the time saved would be negligible IMO.

I agree, disabling the addon won't really gain you a whole lot. Granted it will still run and set the GUI properties, but the performance hit is extremely small. There was a different thread on this forum (can't find it now) where someone was doing some testing of the CPU usage of various service addons. As I recall most service addons "sleep" around 1000ms between polling checks. At this rate the CPU usage was almost immeasureable. To actually see a performance hit the polling time needed to be decreased to 100ms and even then it added 0.3% CPU usage, per addon. The Fanart Grabber uses a poll time of 500ms. In short - disable if you want but you probably won't notice anything.

[removed151214]

(The thread robweber is referring to above regarding service performance/sleeping)

[braz]

Jeroen, I would like change the now playing fanart for artists that don't have fanart. Right now it displays a black background for artists with no fanart. I've looked in Variables.xml and tried setting a fallback for Artists Slideshow, but couldn't get anything to work. I'd like to make artists with missing fanart display the default music background, ie

special://skin/backgrounds/defaults/music.jpg

Is the black background defined in the skin? If so, where? Thanks!

[Jeroen]

No, there's no black background set anywhere. As a matter of fact I have been struggling with that too. Artists slideshow rarely displays anything for me lately, and I've seen more people having trouble with it.

I have only set fallbacks for regular fanart. I have also set it to fall back to regular fanart when artists slideshow can't provide images. It seems to me artists slideshow is reporting it has images, but not displaying any thus making the conditions I set never return true.

I'll investigate this some more.

[braz]

No, there's no black background set anywhere. As a matter of fact I have been struggling with that too. Artists slideshow rarely displays anything for me lately, and I've seen more people having trouble with it.

I have only set fallbacks for regular fanart. I have also set it to fall back to regular fanart when artists slideshow can't provide images. It seems to me artists slideshow is reporting it has images, but not displaying any thus making the conditions I set never return true.

I'll investigate this some more.

Ok, thanks, I'll look into it some more too. I was having a bigger problem earlier where AS wouldn't display fanart when clicking back to full screen viz, but updated to the latest beta and it fixed those problems.

AS 1.6.8 beta 1
http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid...pid1746800

[Jeroen]

If this isn't working for you I'd be curious as to why. Any details you can give me of the tests you've done would be great. Also, if you add

PHP Code:

utils.log(utils.getSetting('refresh'),xbmc.LOGDEBUG) 


To line 141 of the service.py file you can print the refresh time in debug mode and check. Side note - the default refresh time is 10 so this setting must be working since reFocus extends this to 20 seconds normally.

Thanks rob, I'll try this out tomorrow.

[Jeroen]

No, there's no black background set anywhere. As a matter of fact I have been struggling with that too. Artists slideshow rarely displays anything for me lately, and I've seen more people having trouble with it.

I have only set fallbacks for regular fanart. I have also set it to fall back to regular fanart when artists slideshow can't provide images. It seems to me artists slideshow is reporting it has images, but not displaying any thus making the conditions I set never return true.

I'll investigate this some more.

Ok, thanks, I'll look into it some more too. I was having a bigger problem earlier where AS wouldn't display fanart when clicking back to full screen viz, but updated to the latest beta and it fixed those problems.

AS 1.6.8 beta 1
http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid...pid1746800

Thanks, that beta fixed the problem for me too.

Though contrary to what I thought last night, I have no fallback in place for Artist Slideshow. The add-on doesn't really provide any property for it either. The only way is to use Window.Property(ArtistSlideshowTransparent) as a condition. The user then has to enable "Use transparent background when no artist images are found" in the addon's settings window in order to see the fallback image provided through the skin.

This way I can't really use a condition based on whether there are images available, but only on whether the user has a setting enabled in the add-on. So even if there are images available through AS, I am still needlessly displaying the fallback image behind it. Can't say I'm a fan of the implementation, but I've added it for the next release.

[Jeroen]

If this isn't working for you I'd be curious as to why. Any details you can give me of the tests you've done would be great.

Turns out it wasn't changing for me because I would edit the value in Startup.xml and then go to:

Skin Settings->Use a slideshow of your fanart->apply

If I completely exited XBMC and restarted the new value was picked up. Which I didn't really understand as that apply button uses ReplaceWindow(startup) and the service is triggered in Startup.xml

So I did some more testing and came to this scenario:

1. Edit the value in Startup.xml
   
2. Skin Settings->Use a slideshow of your fanart->apply
   
3. After the previously set refresh time has passed (I had it set high to 100), then the new refresh time picks up
   

Does this make sense to you? I'm guessing as it's a service it's never really stopped unless XBMC quits, and therefore it just finishes it's "cycle". I think it's fine this way, but if this is something you don't expect / wish to change I'll be happy to provide a log.

[braz]

No, there's no black background set anywhere. As a matter of fact I have been struggling with that too. Artists slideshow rarely displays anything for me lately, and I've seen more people having trouble with it.

I have only set fallbacks for regular fanart. I have also set it to fall back to regular fanart when artists slideshow can't provide images. It seems to me artists slideshow is reporting it has images, but not displaying any thus making the conditions I set never return true.

I'll investigate this some more.

Ok, thanks, I'll look into it some more too. I was having a bigger problem earlier where AS wouldn't display fanart when clicking back to full screen viz, but updated to the latest beta and it fixed those problems.

AS 1.6.8 beta 1
http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid...pid1746800

Thanks, that beta fixed the problem for me too.

Though contrary to what I thought last night, I have no fallback in place for Artist Slideshow. The add-on doesn't really provide any property for it either. The only way is to use Window.Property(ArtistSlideshowTransparent) as a condition. The user then has to enable "Use transparent background when no artist images are found" in the addon's settings window in order to see the fallback image provided through the skin.

This way I can't really use a condition based on whether there are images available, but only on whether the user has a setting enabled in the add-on. So even if there are images available through AS, I am still needlessly displaying the fallback image behind it. Can't say I'm a fan of the implementation, but I've added it for the next release.

Looking forward to trying it out.

fyi, looks like pkscout may add a window property to determine whether or not AS has fanart.

http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid...pid1751163

UPDATE: beta 2 adds a new window property that should allow you to test for available fanart

http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid...pid1752342

[robweber]

If this isn't working for you I'd be curious as to why. Any details you can give me of the tests you've done would be great.

Turns out it wasn't changing for me because I would edit the value in Startup.xml and then go to:

Skin Settings->Use a slideshow of your fanart->apply

If I completely exited XBMC and restarted the new value was picked up. Which I didn't really understand as that apply button uses ReplaceWindow(startup) and the service is triggered in Startup.xml

So I did some more testing and came to this scenario:

1. Edit the value in Startup.xml
   
2. Skin Settings->Use a slideshow of your fanart->apply
   
3. After the previously set refresh time has passed (I had it set high to 100), then the new refresh time picks up
   

Does this make sense to you? I'm guessing as it's a service it's never really stopped unless XBMC quits, and therefore it just finishes it's "cycle". I think it's fine this way, but if this is something you don't expect / wish to change I'll be happy to provide a log.

Was XBMC running or not when you changed the Startup.xml file? When I was testing I changed the Startup.xml line, then started XBMC. Doing it this way applied the setting instantly, If XBMC is already running and you do the Fanart->apply (to force re-running the ScriptRun() line) then it makes sense that you have to complete 1 cycle of the old refresh time. This is because that setting is only evaluated when the images change, once you've switched images you have to wait until the previous time expires and it will grab the new one. Seems like expected behavior all the way around from what you've described.

[Jeroen]

Was XBMC running or not when you changed the Startup.xml file? When I was testing I changed the Startup.xml line, then started XBMC. Doing it this way applied the setting instantly, If XBMC is already running and you do the Fanart->apply (to force re-running the ScriptRun() line) then it makes sense that you have to complete 1 cycle of the old refresh time. This is because that setting is only evaluated when the images change, once you've switched images you have to wait until the previous time expires and it will grab the new one. Seems like expected behavior all the way around from what you've described.

Yeah, I had XBMC running thinking reloading from startup would immediately apply the new value. Makes sense the way you describe it, it's working as intended

fyi, looks like pkscout may add a window property to determine whether or not AS has fanart.

http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid...pid1751163

UPDATE: beta 2 adds a new window property that should allow you to test for available fanart

http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid...pid1752342

Great, thanks for the heads up

[haansplosion]

Hi Jeroen, love the skin! It's incredibly simple, intuitive, and minimal. The customisable menu is really easy to use, and a nice touch.

One slight problem though - Im not able to get the watchlist working properly.. It just navigates to the video list.

I also had a few humble suggestions, I hope you dont mind? The shelf would be absolutely perfect if it was possible to hide watched items! It would also be good to have the episode thumbnail in the shelf for new episodes, so as to be able to distinguish individual episodes?

Thanks for the awesome skin!!

[removed151214]

One slight problem though - Im not able to get the watchlist working properly.. It just navigates to the video list.

Double-check the action for the watchlist menu entries are correct - either

Code:

ActivateWindow(videos,plugin://script.watchlist?type=movies,return)

or type=episodes.

Then post a full debug log (wiki).